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Newsletter: Congratulations Nadira Hussain!

Lit candles and icing covering a birthday cake.

2 years as Socitm’s Chief and 30 years in local gov

Get everything you can from your membership

Your events, training and resources

It’s a Happy Birthday to our chief executive Nadira Hussain: two years in the role and thirty years working in local government.  She’s written about all of this, and her observations of what’s changed in local government are essential reading. Has much changed?!

Your member-only training schedule continues next week with an Introduction to Emotional Intelligence

Start your personal development training journey with Tuesday’s workshop.

The aim of this workshop is to share some ideas to help us understand what the components of emotional intelligence are and what we can do to enhance it. You’ll look at the most recent research along with practical tips that we can all use to make us healthier, happier, and more effective at what we do.

Your best bits

Your nominations so far for the 2024 Socitm Awards have been excellent. But we know you have more good stuff to share! Don’t keep it to yourselves. Share your great work, people and collaborations with the rest of the Socitm community.
It’s not a tricky form (honest) and the Reason For Nomination box is a max of ~500 words.
Take a look and find your best category (categories).

Get involved in benchmarking and bolster your AI business case

There are very limited places remaining on the AI and Automation Benchmarking Pilot. The pilot is running from now until Friday 7 June 2024 and is free of charge (you will need to start and submit data in this time frame) for members.

Get in touch with us on benchmarking@socitm.net as soon as possible.

Do you mentor?

Join (and encourage your colleagues to join) the group of people volunteering to take part in 2024’s free mentoring programme. Both people in a mentoring relationship can impact the other in such a direct way. Exactly how, will only become clear once you’re doing it.
Register your interest.

Plan your journey to Birmingham in June

Have you registered for President’s Conference yet? Immerse yourself in two days of re-imagining public services as we bring together the brightest minds and passionate souls from across the public sector in a safe and inspiring environment. It’s more than just a conference — it’s a gathering where innovation sparks, ideas flourish, and connections ignite.

techUK Local Government Skills Survey

Do you work or recruit in the tech profession within local government? Then techUK are inviting you to fill in their short Skills Survey. Based on the data provided they’ll be able to provide recommendations on how to make small changes to impact positive outcomes – to ensure everyone can reap the benefits of digital transformation.

Best wishes,

Alex.

Your Resource Hub

From Digital Trends 2024: Harnessing data

The importance of ‘data’ is not a new trend. However, the focus on harnessing data in 2024 will intensify, as the extreme pressures on public services finances continue to grow. More and more of you are recognising the need to treat data as a critical resource to target resources, address financial shortfalls and manage rising demands and needs.

Report researcher and co-author Jos Creese spoke recently about this year’s trends with colleagues in New Zealand. Log in to watch his presentation to ALGIM members.

Read more

From AI@Socitm: Skills and competencies

Access tutorials, webinars, training programmes and impact cases to enhance technical proficiency, strategic thinking and practical application of AI.

Want to add your own content? Let us know on hello@socitm.net or use the contact us form [choose Research as your area of interest].

Let’s help each other connect the dots.

Read more

You might have missed…

Watch the webinar: How M365 Copilot can impact local and regional government that covers live demos, a crash course in prompt writing and a look at some more complex tasks using Copilot.

For ease of viewing, the recording is divided into easy to navigate chapters, with subtitles and transcript available via the video player toolbar.

Browse the Resource Hub

Accessibility and inclusion

Accessibility Week returns in May. Get better at supporting yourself, colleagues and service users.

Log in to check your Silktide Score and to complete your Digital Accessibility Maturity Assessment.

Browse EDI resources

You will need a user account on socitm.net to access member-only resources. Let us know if need any support.

Training

Leadership Advocate Irene Docherty has recently completed the Empowering Women course:

“I was able to take time to reflect on my values and biases and to challenge my own thinking. The realisation that we all shared many views, issues and aspirations was eye-opening.”

Read all about it her new Q&A. How was your course? Tell us about it 🙂
Irene and her colleague Emma Macquarrie are our guests for the next alumni coffee hour on Friday 10 May. They’re going to talk about the Importance of development even in austere times.

Virtual workshops

In-person programmes

Training places are included in your organisational membership – subject to availability and membership level. If you have any questions or would like further information, please email the training team.

Browse all training

President’s Conference. People Make Places

Wednesday 12 and Thursday 13 June in Birmingham

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to feel inspired, connected, and equipped to deal with whatever the future holds.

As well as conference passes your organisation may have seats for the President’s gala dinner and hotel rooms. Log in for your details.

Register now

Events

Member-only meetings

Meet people for catching-up, problem sharing (and solving) and great networking.

Free webinars and meetings hosted by Socitm

Free webinars and events hosted by partners and others

Missed a webinar? Past recordings are available to watch in the resource hub.

Webinars are open to anyone in the public sector, membership is not necessary, so please do share them with your network.

Come and say hello

  • Tuesday 21 May:
    • GeoPlace [Manchester]
    • LGPN North [Manchester]
      Join President Mark Lumley for the roundtable discussion Empowering communities: technology for public good
    • PublicTechnology Live 2024 [London]
      Incoming President Carol Williams is a panellist for Are times too tough for local government transformation?
  • Tuesday 24 September: DigiGov Expo [London]
    Join Nadira Hussain, President Mark Lumley and Sam Smith
    • Nadira is chairing the Citizen Experience stream. In which, at 15:25, Mark (Director of ICT and Digital at London Borough of Hounslow) is a panellist on Data-Driven Collaboration: Transforming governance through strategic partnerships and enhanced data sharing
    • Sam is a panellist in the GovICT stream at 15:10 for Driving Transformation through an Effective Strategy: The pillars needed to achieve success
Browse all events

Professional registration for digital health leaders marks a milestone in healthcare tech 

In a transformative development, the Digital Health Leadership Programme is set to change the landscape of healthcare technology professionals by offering professional registration, akin to established healthcare roles, through collaboration with the Federation for Informatics Professionals in Health and Social Care.

Learn more

PPMA elects Pam Parkes as New President

“..I will seek to strengthen our relationships across other public sector membership bodies that enable us to broaden our thinking, reach and collective power. Relationships with the West Midlands Employers, SOCITM, HPMA, UHR, CIPD will be increasingly important as we embrace AI, new technology and transform public service delivery, it is here where system leadership will be key…”

Learn more

Thank you for reading (or scrolling) this far! Just one more thing…

It’s the last day of Tree Week on the Atlas Obscura podcast today. Listen to the story about how a practical municipal activity blossomed (sorry, not sorry) into beautiful correspondence.

Photo by Richard Burlton on Unsplash